Meeting of Rodrigues and Ferreira

The meeting between Sebastian Rodrigues and his former teacher Christovao Ferreira at the Saishoji temple in Nagasaki is the novel's theological and emotional climax, where Rodrigues confronts the apostate Ferreira's radical claim that Christianity cannot take root in Japan and that Christ himself would have apostatized for the sake of suffering peasants, shattering Rodrigues's idealized faith and preparing his own apostasy.

Circumstances and Setting

In September, after months of imprisonment and psychological erosion, Rodrigues was suddenly taken from his cell by the interpreter and brought by palanquin through the streets of Nagasaki to a temple called Saishoji. The interpreter, speaking in his usual jesting manner and playing with his fan, told Rodrigues he would meet someone he wanted to see. The priest, by now too weary even to hate the interpreter, sat listlessly as the palanquin carried him through the town, its blind lowered to avoid the idle curiosity of passers-by. The sounds and smells of daily Japanese life—the shrieking of children, the bells of the bonzes, the noise of construction, the smells of trees and mud, of hens, cows, and horses—pierced through the blind, and Rodrigues felt a sudden longing to talk to others, to be like other people, to plunge into the daily life of men. He had had enough of hiding in charcoal huts, of roaming through the mountains in terror of his pursuers, of the sight of Christians massacred daily before his very eyes. At the temple, a two-storied gate stood above a flight of stairs, and behind it the small temple was bathed in the light of the evening sun, with brown mountains and cliffs stretching out behind. Two or three cocks strutted arrogantly around the compound. A young bonze came out, looked up at the priest with eyes that flashed hostility, and disappeared without a word of greeting. The interpreter squatted down on the floor and looked out at the garden, telling Rodrigues that sitting alone all day long looking at the wall and brooding was poison for him. The priest, however, was distracted by an alien smell in the midst of the temple's incense and Japanese food—the smell of meat, from which he had been forced to abstain for so long that he had become sensitive to the slightest trace of it.

The Appearance of Ferreira

From far away, the sound of footsteps approached along the lengthy corridor. Following on the heels of an old monk, Ferreira walked in, wearing a black kimono, his eyes cast down. The stocky, self-confidently puffing little monk emphasized the servility of the tall Ferreira, who, with lowered eyes, looked just like a big animal trailed reluctantly along by a rope around its neck. The old monk came to a halt, and Ferreira, without a word, glanced at the priest and then sat down in a corner of the floor lightened by the setting sun. For some time there was a deathly silence. Rodrigues, trembling, finally spoke: "Father! Father!" Ferreira raised his bowed head a little, and for an instant there flashed into his eyes a servile smile and momentary shame, but then he looked down at the other deliberately and challengingly. Rodrigues, conscious of his priesthood, was at a loss for words; his heart was too full to speak, and anything he said would feel like a lie. Nostalgia, anger, sadness, hatred—all kinds of conflicting emotions simmered within his breast. He cried out in his heart, asking why Ferreira put on such a face, insisting he had not come to condemn him. He tried to force a smile to his lips, but instead a white tear fell from his eye and flowed slowly down his cheek. When Rodrigues finally broke the silence with the words "Father, so long since we have met," he was aware how foolish and silly the words sounded, but nothing else would come to his lips. Ferreira remained silent, the challenging smile still lingering on his lips. Rodrigues understood very well how the weak and servile smile could give place to this challenging expression, and it was precisely because he understood that he felt he would like to collapse on the spot like a withered tree. He begged Ferreira to say something, and strange words rose in his throat: he wanted to say that Ferreira had shaved off his beard. In the old days, the Ferreira whom Rodrigues and Garrpe had known had had such a well-groomed beard, something that gave his whole appearance an air of kindness combined with gravity, but now the chin and upper lip were smooth and clean-shaven, and Rodrigues felt his eyes drawn to this part of Ferreira's face, which somehow reflected a terrible sensuality.

Ferreira's Self-Justification and the Revelation of His Life

Ferreira told Rodrigues that he was deceiving himself, and when Rodrigues asked what he was doing all day, a flash of pain crossed Ferreira's face as he put his hand on his well-shaven chin. The interpreter broke in, saying that "the honourable Sawano" spent his day writing. Ferreira, speaking rapidly as if to shut the interpreter's mouth, explained that at the magistrate's order he was translating a book on astronomy. He insisted that he was of some use to the people of this country, that the Japanese already had knowledge and learning of all kinds, but in the line of astronomy and medicine a Westerner like himself could still help them. He said he had asked the Dutch commander to lend them lenses and telescopes, and he repeated, almost desperately, "I am not useless in this country. I can perform some service. I can!" Rodrigues stared at this Ferreira who kept persistently talking on and on, and he understood the other's psychology: Ferreira was not only talking to him but also to the interpreter and the bonze, wanting them to hear, and he kept prattling to justify his existence in his own eyes. Rodrigues realized that even after his apostasy, Ferreira had not been able to escape from the old psychological orientation that had motivated him—the one wish and the only dream of one who had dedicated himself to the priesthood: to be useful to others. Ferreira seemed to be relying on his old dream of helping others like a crazy woman who offers her breast to a baby. When Rodrigues asked if he was happy, a flame again flashed into Ferreira's challenging eyes, and he replied, "There are all kinds of subjective factors in the concept of happiness." The interpreter then revealed that Ferreira was writing a book called Gengiroku to refute the teaching of Deus and show the errors of Christianity, and that the magistrate praised it. Rodrigues now saw clearly why Ferreira had spoken so rapidly and hastily about his translation of astronomy: Ferreira, at the bidding of the Lord of Chikugo, had to sit at his desk every day writing that this Christianity to which he had devoted his life was false. Rodrigues felt he could almost see the bent back of Ferreira as he plied his quill, and he cried out, "Cruel! Worse than any torture! I can't think of anything more dastardly." As Ferreira tried to turn his face away, Rodrigues saw a white tear glistening in his eye. The black Japanese kimono, the chestnut hair bound back in Japanese style, the name Sawano Chuan—and yet this man was still alive. Rodrigues thought, "Lord, you are still silent. You still maintain your deep silence in a life like this!"

The Pit and the Argument about Japan

The interpreter told Ferreira to get his work done quickly, and Ferreira seemed to lose his former fighting spirit. He pointed to a scar behind his ear, a brown scar like that left after a burn, and said, "It's called the pit. You've probably heard about it. They bind you in such a way that you can move neither hands nor feet; and then they hang you upside down in a pit." The interpreter extended both hands in a gesture of dread, explaining that these little openings were made behind the ears so that the victim would not die immediately, the blood trickling out drop by drop, a torture invented by the Magistrate Inoue. Before Rodrigues's mind floated the picture of Inoue: the big ears, the rich complexion, the fleshy face, the face upon which had played the smile of assent when Rodrigues argued in his own defence. The interpreter then urged Rodrigues to think it over, saying he was the only Christian priest left in the country and that he was useless, and he pointed to Ferreira as an example of someone who was helping others by translating books of astronomy and medicine. Ferreira, lowering his eyes, whispered weakly, "For twenty years I have laboured in this country. I know it better than you." Rodrigues raised his voice in an attempt to encourage the other, saying he had read with great respect the letters Ferreira sent to the headquarters of the Society. But Ferreira replied, "Well, before your eyes stands the figure of an old missionary defeated by missionary work." Rodrigues insisted that no one could be defeated by missionary work, that when they were dead yet another missionary would board a junk at Macao and secretly come ashore somewhere in this country. The interpreter quickly interrupted, saying that whenever one was captured it was Japanese blood that would flow, and that it was time to leave them in peace. Ferreira repeated with an emotionless voice, "For twenty years I laboured in the mission. The one thing I know is that our religion does not take root in this country." Rodrigues cried out, shaking his head, "It is not that it does not take root. It's that the roots are torn up." Ferreira, without raising his head, answered like a puppet without emotion: "This country is a swamp. In time you will come to see that for yourself. This country is a more terrible swamp than you can imagine. Whenever you plant a sapling in this swamp the roots begin to rot; the leaves grow yellow and wither. And we have planted the sapling of Christianity in this swamp." Rodrigues countered that there was a time when the sapling grew and sent forth leaves, but Ferreira, gazing directly at the priest with a faint smile of pity, asked, "And supposing the God whom those Japanese believed in was not the God of Christian teaching?" He murmured that the Japanese of that time believed in their own gods, not the Christian God, and that for a long time the missionaries failed to realize this and firmly believed that the Japanese had become Christians. He said that even Saint Francis Xavier failed to notice this, and that his very word "Deus" the Japanese freely changed into "Dainichi" (The Great Sun), because to the Japanese who adored the sun the pronunciation of "Deus" and "Dainichi" was almost the same. Rodrigues interrupted, saying that if Xavier had had a good interpreter such a strange and trifling error would never have arisen, but Ferreira, with nervous irritation appearing around his temples, insisted that Rodrigues understood nothing. He said that even when the confusion of vocabulary disappeared, the twisting and changing secretly continued, and that even in the glorious missionary period the Japanese did not believe in the Christian God but in their own distortion. Rodrigues asked, "They twisted and changed our God and made something different! Isn't even that our Deus?" Ferreira answered, "No! In the minds of the Japanese the Christian God was completely changed." At Rodrigues's loud cry, the chicken that had been quietly nibbling food on the bare floor fluttered off into a corner. Ferreira said that Rodrigues and those like him were only looking at the externals of missionary work, not considering the kernel. He admitted that in his twenty years of labour in Kyoto, Kyushu, Chugoku, Sendai, and the rest, churches were built, seminaries were established in Arima and Azuchi, and the Japanese vied with one another to become Christians, and that there were 400,000 Christians at one time. But he insisted that in the churches built throughout the country, the Japanese were not praying to the Christian God; they twisted God to their own way of thinking in a way the missionaries could never imagine. He said, "It is like a butterfly caught in a spider's web. At first it is certainly a butterfly, but the next day only the externals, the wings and the trunk, are those of a butterfly; it has lost its true reality and has become a skeleton. In Japan our God is just like that butterfly caught in the spider's web: only the exterior form of God remains, but it has already become a skeleton." Rodrigues, covering his face with his hands, said he had seen the martyrs with his own eyes, that they had died burning with faith, and that if these people had not died for their faith it would be a blasphemy to man. But Ferreira spoke clearly and with self-confidence, deliberately emphasizing every word: "They did not believe in the Christian God. The Japanese till this day have never had the concept of God; and they never will." These words descended on Rodrigues's heart like the weight of a huge, immovable rock. Ferreira continued, "The Japanese are not able to think of God completely divorced from man; the Japanese cannot think of an existence that transcends the human." Rodrigues insisted that Christianity and the Church were truths that transcend all countries and territories, but Ferreira said, "The Japanese imagine a beautiful, exalted man—and this they call God. They call by the name of God something which has the same kind of existence as man. But that is not the Church's God." When Rodrigues asked if that was the only thing he had learnt from his twenty years in this country, Ferreira nodded in a lonely way and said, "Only that. And so the mission lost its meaning for me. The sapling I brought quickly decayed to its roots in this swamp. For a long time I neither knew nor noticed this." Rodrigues, overcome with an uncontrollable sense of bitter resignation, whispered, "You are not the Ferreira I knew." Ferreira answered, lowering his eyes, "True. I am not Ferreira. I am a man who has received from the magistrate the name of Sawano Chuan. And not only the name. I have received the wife and children of the executed man."

Aftermath and Rodrigues's Reflection

That night, back in his prison cell, Rodrigues sat staring at the blank wall while the rays of the moon pierced through the bars, bathing his back with light. He tried to convince himself that Ferreira had talked in this way just to defend his own wrong and weakness, but then a gust of fear would seize him and he would wonder if what Ferreira said were not perhaps true. Ferreira had said that this Japan was a bottomless swamp, that the sapling decayed at its roots and withered, that Christianity was like this sapling, quite unperceived it had withered and died. The words of Ferreira, uttered slowly syllable by syllable, pierced his ears: "It's not because of any prohibition nor because of persecution that Christianity has perished. There's something in this country that completely stifles the growth of Christianity." And somehow in Ferreira's words there was a certain sincerity unlike the self-deception of a defeated man. Rodrigues banged his head against the wall, murmuring monotonously that it could not be so, that it was impossible. He thought of the poverty-stricken martyrs he had seen with his own eyes, and he recalled Ferreira's sadness: in the course of their conversation, Ferreira had said not one word about the poor Japanese martyrs, deliberately avoiding any thought of people who were stronger than himself, people who had heroically endured torture and the pit. Rodrigues realized that Ferreira was trying to increase, even by one, the number of weaklings like himself, to share with others his cowardice and loneliness. He asked himself if now Ferreira was sleeping, and he knew that the old man, in some part of the same city, was sitting in the darkness like himself, his eyes open, staring in front of him, biting at the depths of his solitude, and that this loneliness was much colder, much more terrible than that which he endured in this prison cell. In order to pile weakness upon weakness, Ferreira was trying to drag others along the path that he himself had walked. Rodrigues prayed, "Lord, will you not save him?" and then, comparing his own loneliness and sadness with that of Ferreira, he felt for the first time some self-respect and satisfaction, and he was able quietly to laugh. Lying down on the hard, bare floor, he waited for the onrush of sleep.